Anyone expecting Blu-Ray on this iMac revision has been, shall we say, a wee bit out of touch recently.

Blu-Ray is a mess. I was watching a Blu-Ray movie last night (or trying to) while it repeatedly connected to the internet, downloading "content" that I have absolutely no interest in watching. There's no way around watching endless previews, intros, etc... I just want to watch the goddam movie! But no, Sony says you have to do this and wade through 15 minutes of junk before you watch a movie that you thought was yours.

You really want crap like that in a computer? Doesn't matter - the more important consideration is, does Apple want that in their computers? Obviously not.

You want to play Blu-Ray? Get a Blu-Ray player. Want a computer? Get an iMac.

Interesting. I bought a blu ray player without the wi fi antenna so when it boots up, I get a spinning gear for ten seconds and it's on with the show. Agree about the previews. Shouldn't have to drill through menus to get to your movie. If I want ads I'll watch TBS or AMC or TNT.

So long as you can get a third party blu ray burner, I don't see it being a deal breaker. But I understand people wanting one. If you're going to use iMovie and edit hi def video, what exactly are you supposed to do with your masterpiece? Break it up into little pieces and put it in DVD's? Share it with the Mobile Me web gallery?

It's clear that Apple's focus is not on the Mac lineup, but on the iPhone these days. While USB 3.0 isn't immediately necessary because of a relative lack of accessories for it, it is a desirable feature. There was a time when the Mac lineup would rush out new technology. Now, it's become a follower. I think it's clear that Apple's efforts is in gadgets, and not it's Mac lineup. That's a shame...

Interesting. I bought a blu ray player without the wi fi antenna so when it boots up,

BD-Live movies don't MAKE you view the downloadable content and force you into a non-theater experience. I think the key is the user has to actually read the items being selected before pressing ENTER on the remote.

No USB 3.0, No eSATA, not even an ATI 5770? I'll skip also this iteration, thanks.

It seems pretty clear that they went 5750 to save nearly 20W in the thermal profile. It's a decent step up from the previous iMac and you are never going to see the highest end gpu or CPU in an iMac or a laptop. The 5750 delivers 90% of 5770's performance at <85% of it's power profile and is a good tradeoff.

For the enthusiast market (who does want the bleeding edge, latest and greatest, over clocked, etc)... I think Apple realizes they cannot compete, so why bother? These are the people who either won't be happy in MacOSX at all, or who will build a hackintosh to get there. And at the margins those companies are squabbling over, I'm sure Apple wishes you well in pursuit of that. The greatest thing that the move to Intel has done for Apple is to make the hackintosh possible. They aren't going to come out and say it (no way they are going back to the clone disaster), but I'm sure they'd be happy if you bought a copy of their OS.

Very nice. The 2.93 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 processor (hmm, maybe the 256GB SSD is too small) is a great option for some more hard core Video Editing and Motion Graphics. Although nothing can beat out that 12 Core Mac Pro - my goodness. Well at least the iMac i7 is more affordable - relatively speaking.

Apple are STILL skimping on the GPU... despite Steam and other gaming platforms becoming more popular on Mac.

The 4670 is more than a generation old, and was an $80 GPU at the end of 2008. My 4890 in my self-built PC is at least 4x as fast in real world gaming, and is also almost 2 years old.

The 5670 is a little better (at least it's current gen) but it's still from the bargain bucket. Even the Mac Pro only has a 5770, which would lose in almost any (DX10/DX9) benchmark against my 2 year old 4890.

I understand the iMac is not supposed to be a high-end gaming rig and that heat could be an issue with really high end GPUs, but there needs to be a middle ground. I'd love to throw all in with an iMac and lose my PC tower, but GPU performance is important to me and Apple have ignored it, yet again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Programmer

It seems pretty clear that they went 5750 to save nearly 20W in the thermal profile. It's a decent step up from the previous iMac and you are never going to see the highest end gpu or CPU in an iMac or a laptop. The 5750 delivers 90% of 5770's performance at <85% of it's power profile and is a good tradeoff.

The 5750 is a good GPU, but Apple plonked it into a machine that sports a 2560 x 1440 display, so it's going to choke. A 5770 will stuggle at that resolution, let alone a 5750 which has 10% fewer texture units and slower memory clock (meaning lower fill rate).

To give your iMac a real performance boost, configure your 27-inch iMac on the Apple Online Store with an optional 256GB solid-state drive. You can choose it as your only drive or have it installed in addition to the built-in hard drive, allowing you to store the operating system, critical applications, and important files on the solid-state drive and your other files on the hard drive.

This is really puzzling for me that Apple sells SSDs but doesn't want to offer TRIM support in OS X. This is really annoying . Apple shouldn't advertise Mac OS X as the most advanced OS while it doesn't actually support advanced technology like TRIM.

Thank you for agreeing, now if Steve is reading this thread, OS 10.6.5 will support TRIM and SSD's on all macs and MBP's

無心The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders., Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit__Edward Abbey

Very nice. The 2.93 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 processor (hmm, maybe the 256GB SSD is too small) is a great option for some more hard core Video Editing and Motion Graphics. Although nothing can beat out that 12 Core Mac Pro - my goodness. Well at least the iMac i7 is more affordable - relatively speaking.

Interesting that you can get an SSD + SATA drive via CTO at Apple.com, but not two SATA drives or two SSDs...

Quote:
Originally Posted by FineTunes
Now that Apple is moving to SSD options in their iMacs and Mac Pro's, it would be nice if the next upgrade in OS X will support TRIM commands and address some of the issues that are found with SSDs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChristophB

Hoping there's hope in 10.6.5.

-Chris

STEVE: ARE YOU READING THIS?????

無心The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders., Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit__Edward Abbey

Now that Apple is moving to SSD options in their iMacs and Mac Pro's, it would be nice if the next upgrade in OS X will support TRIM commands and address some of the issues that are found with SSDs.

I hope so, I have a Corsair RealSSD in my MacBook... it works great, but I am sure it could be even better. The rumor is that TRIM in OS X will need the latest hardware controller, which would be terrible especially as Windows 7 and Vista doesn't have this requirement.

I'd love to throw all in with an iMac and lose my PC tower, but GPU performance is important to me and Apple have ignored it, yet again.

I tried that with the original i7 iMac and ended up buying another PC tower 6 months later. I found that trying to turn an iMac in to a gaming machine just got me a noisy Mac and mediocre gaming performance. Separate boxes is the go.

Yes that is very nice. I would have preferred the lower end configuration to offer integrated graphics (320M) and BTO SSD, so you could configure the ultimate silent iMac. But it appears it's discrete graphics all round (which means +1 fan), and SSD is for the 27" only. So the Ultimate Silent iMac (TM) is not a possibility.

I hope so, I have a Corsair RealSSD in my MacBook... it works great, but I am sure it could be even better. The rumor is that TRIM in OS X will need the latest hardware controller, which would be terrible especially as Windows 7 and Vista doesn't have this requirement.

I would hope that any upgrade in OS X would be backward compatible to earlier SSD's that Apple supplied with the MA and MBP. Have a 17" 2009 MBP and have had no problems with my 256 GB SSD. See that OWC has some solutions @

Yeah the 3.06GHz i3 has no Turbo Boost, all the other models do. That's probably fine for the lowest end model, but it does seem odd. Does the line of i3 with turbo boost go no lower than 3.2GHz? If so that would explain it, another way for Apple to differentiate the product line.

You seem to misunderstand what Turbo Boost is - it's a marketing name for the enginineering concept "Runs Too Hot".

It's not a boost, but rather a reduction from the full speed of the core - the marketing weenies turned the problem on its head to create a 'feature'.

Well, I don't want to buy a compressed crap, sold as HD movie, on iTunes store for 20 bucks, when I can get a true HD movie for 10 bucks. That's called throwing away your money on utter shit.

I would say that paying for 1080p video on 27 inches and paying for high-bitrate, multi channel audio through stereo computer speakers, is throwing your money away. If you want home theater experience, invest the money into a home theater. Otherwise, accept the fact that computers are to HD video as Kia's are to motoring!

Breaking this down... what speed/performance improvements does a Core i3 bring to the table...

Currently, I have a (early 2008) 2.66Gz C2D with 4GB RAM (20" model), with a ATi HD 2600 PRO GPU ... Am I going to see moderate or greatly improved performance? I don't do alot of gaming, but I did install Steam and get Portal and it seems to run fine on my current machine, but I have not ventured out to try other Steam games like HL2, etc...

I do some HD video editing and encoding and currently, it can take a few hours to render out a video of about an hour of length. Other than that, I don't do any real work on the machine.

It's clear that Apple's focus is not on the Mac lineup, but on the iPhone these days. While USB 3.0 isn't immediately necessary because of a relative lack of accessories for it, it is a desirable feature. There was a time when the Mac lineup would rush out new technology. Now, it's become a follower. I think it's clear that Apple's efforts is in gadgets, and not it's Mac lineup. That's a shame...

I keep seeing this kind of argument and it never quite makes sense to me. The Mac product line continues to outsell itself quarter by quarter, so why wouldn't this continue to be a focus for Apple? I'm going out on a limb here, but I would guess that Apple has different development teams for Mac, iPad, iPod, etc. In fact, I would even guess that there is further differentiation at Apple in that there are most likely specific design teams for the MacBook, one for the iMac, another for the Mac Pro, etc.

The Mac product line seems to be a cash cow for Apple. Why would Apple ever as a company decide to simply neglect this revenue stream? Are they simply starstruck with their own ingenuity over the iPad and iPhone? Do they really believe that the desktop computer is going the way of the dodo? Even if this were true, doesn't it make more sense for them to ride this cash cow all the way into the sunset rather than abandoning it before it's time? Especially with ever increasing sales?

My guess is that once you start seeing USB 3.0 devices at BestBuy and WalMart you'll also see it in Macs. In fact, I'm pretty confident that you'll see it in Macs well before you can go into BestBuy and have anything other than one or two out of stock USB 3.0 drives. It's nice to have all the latest bells and whistles, but there is a point at which it simply doesn't make sense to throw in the bleeding edge just to say it's there.

Well iMac is a solid computer but no longer the one that used to have best of technologies to justify its price. Getting 1 GB of memory is nice. However, lack of faster connections is a deal breaker for me.

And what, exactly, are you going to connect to eSATA? Is it faster than FW800? Sure. But other than a fast RAID, which is still fairly uncommon for consumers to own, what peripheral are you going to connect that will take advantage of eSATA's speed? You might get a slight benefit if you have a very fast single external drive, but not enough to justify adding that new port.

i thought the only difference between the i5 and i7 chips was faster ram and hyper threading. Why would that even matter if the imac doesn't come with the faster ram the i7 supports. that means you're limited to hyper threading which isn't even important for desktop machines not fully optimized for multicore operations. Grand Central and multicore programming are far from universally adopted features. It's not like this thing is the ps3 where they design for multicore from the start... so I don't understand why anyone would want the upgrade. Also, no usb3? wtf apple? I don't need esata. that's for server nerds. Firewire is at least still relevant for video editing. usb3 should be a mandate. Also partly agree on the bluray. Big wtf on this release. Seems VERY lack luster. super huge WTF on the not allowing you to have 2 hard drives unless one is SSD and one is HDD